XScape media reviews

[Bubs]

I think it is safe to say that average review for this album is 4 stars (eat that Roger Friedman), not counting in New Zealand critics, as they all thought this album shouldn't have come out at all, although didn't somebody post earlier that Xscape went on no 1 in NZ iTunes so what do the critics there know

 

[HIStory]

Michael Jackson's Originals Better Than Updates on 'Xscape'

There are high and low moments on Michael Jackson's second posthumous album, "Xscape," available Tuesday on Epic Recordings. The distinction is rooted in the difference between the contemporized and original versions of previously unreleased songs from the late iconic star.

The album includes eight modern versions of the songs, and the deluxe includes an additional nine original recordings. The catch: Most of the original versions are good as-is; there wasn't a need to give them a contemporary twist.

Considering Jackson is one of the most revered artists of all time and many of his fans are still mourning his 2009 death, his essence is best captured on the versions that revisit his old sounds. On "Love Never Felt So Good," "Loving You," and "A Place With No Name," Jackson feels more organic. The music is stripped down, and his sharp vocals find comfort with the tracks. During these moments, listeners are reminded of Jackson during "Off the Wall" or "Thriller" eras with songs that may not have made the final cut but are satisfactory.

All good, but let's move on to the "modernized" versions. Some of the contemporized takes on the songs are, simply, unsuccessful at capturing Jackson's majestic fluid sound. ("Love Never Felt So Good" featuring Justin Timberlake is one of the exceptions.) Dance track "Slave to the Rhythm" composed by Babyface, L.A. Reid, Daryl Simmons, and Kevin Roberson has an 1980s breakdancing, boogaloo groove that seems a mismatched fit for Jackson. The title track, helmed by Jackson, Rodney Jerkins, Fred Jerkins III, and LaShawn Daniels is another awkward composition, as the track — though good — heavily leans on a booty-shaking, twerk-ready hip-hop tempo, a complete departure for Jackson. "Chicago" feels like an attempt to recapture the energy of Jackson's "Liberian Girl," but it's not as infectious.

"Blue Gangsta" is a puzzling, theatrical song that would have been better suited for one of Jackson's shorts. The concept, possibly a reference to heartache, seems like an early draft of his song "Smooth Criminal."

For the introductory listen, those who desire to feel Jackson nostalgia should skip the first eight songs — i.e., the contemporized productions — and advance to the deluxe portion. It's worth hearing first the songs that better match Jackson's familiar style. The updated versions should be considered as bonus material and special mixes.

https://music.yahoo.com/blogs/music...better-than-updates-on--xscape-010410857.html

 

[Bubs]

Michael Jackson’s ‘Xscape’: Album Review

Xscape is a prickly proposition. On the one hand, it’s a rare treat to hear ‘new’ tunes from the greatest pop star of all time. On the other, the LP is comprised of material Michael Jackson deemed unworthy of release, and even the involvement of the hottest producers in the game can’t hide the fact that this is the musical equivalent of Frankenstein — a soulless hodgepodge of demos from different eras cobbled together to make an unnatural whole. But, like old Frank, it’s impossible to deny that an unexpected spark of life surges through this monster.

Let’s start with the good news. Xscape is a marked improvement on the King of Pop’s first posthumous release, 2010’s abysmal Michael. The songs have been curated with more care and the assorted producers treat the source material with a reverence that was lacking last time. Meaning there are no unwarranted verses from 50 Cent (or any other rapper, for that matter) or legacy-tarnishing filler.

The brief eight-song set also boasts the first true gem to be unearthed from MJ’s vault of unfinished demos. “Love Never Felt So Good” wouldn’t sound out of place on HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. It benefits enormously from the current resurgence in early ‘80s disco, which results in the breezy mid-tempo jam being simultaneously on-trend and utterly authentic to its era.

Even the studio tinkering on the track is minimal. I can take or leave the version with Justin Timberlake (it’s more of a marketing tool than an artistic necessity) but the original is a fully-fledged disco delight that lilts along beautifully. And there’s a simple reason why “Love Never Felt So Good” stands out from the pack. Michael actually deemed the song worthy of release when he handed it over to Johnny Mathis in the early ‘80s. (His version appears on 1984 LP Special Part Of Me).

While nothing quite matches the quality of “Love Never Felt So Good”, there are a bunch of fascinating near-misses, mostly from the Bad era. “Loving You” is an achingly pretty ballad with a subtle, Motown-inspired production courtesy of Timbaland. He shows remarkable restraint – letting Michael’s soulful vocal run free over airy percussion and ragtime piano.

Another worthwhile Bad reject is the worryingly-titled “Do You Know Where Your Children Are”, which, at least initially, seemed like a genuinely tasteless inclusion. The finished product, however, is a surprising raw and powerful cut that also serves as a potent reminder that Michael was at his best when exploring serious issues in a pop framework.

While MJ had his fair share of love songs and dance floor anthems, nobody made gritty subject matter more palatable and catchy than the king of pop. “Billie Jean” (unwanted pregnancy), “Black Or White” (racial discrimination) and “Earth Song” (damage to the environment) were all packaged into pop hits. As such, an angry anthem about street kids (and the dangers they face) was well within his purview. The jittery synths and jagged guitar give the track a modern twist, while the vocal ticks are vintage Michael.

Another Timbaland production, “Chicago” has been doing the rounds for doing the rounds online for a couple of years under the title “She Was Loving Me”. The cleaned up version found on Xscape still seethes with anger and chugs along inoffensively enough. “Blue Gangsta” – a track Michael recorded in the late ‘90s – is an even more furious statement. It sounds like an unfinished “Scream” or undercooked “Smooth Criminal”. Like many of the tracks from that era, there are paranoid overtones and slightly unsettling lyrics (“look what you done to me, I can no longer smile&#8221. It doesn’t sit well with the melodic jams on Xscape and the production is simply too busy for Michael’s fragile voice.

That leaves the title track (an engaging but undeniably dated-sounding Darkchild number about a bad relationship) and a duo of underwhelming cuts that really should have stayed locked away on Michael’s laptop. “Slave To The Rhythm” is a melody-free excursion in over-production, while the curious, America-sampling “A Place With No Name” is in desperate need of a chorus. So where does that leave you? With an album that will be a genuinely rewarding experience for super fans and a patchy but fascinating listen for everyone else.

Best Song That Wasn’t the Single: “Loving You” a sugary sweet radio hit.

Full Disclosure: As a life-long Michael Jackson fan, I desperately wanted Xscape to be worthy of his legacy. It comes fairly close.

Idolator Score: 3.5/5

— Mike Wass

http://www.idolator.com/7518035/michael-jackson-xscape-album-review

 

[pollys2]

Michael Jackson's 'Xscape': Track-By-Track Review

Billboard Rating: 90

http://www.billboard.com/articles/r...-jackson-xscape-album-review-track-billboard?

To answer your first question: Yes, it is any good. And about your second: Better than you think.

To be sure, it's a strange project: a Michael Jackson record of vocals out of the vault and all-new music from Timbaland and Jerome "J-Roc" Harmon, Stargate, Rodney Jerkins and John McClain. L.A. Reid — who oversaw "Xscape" as the chairman and CEO of Epic Records — calls it "contemporizing" Jackson's archival material, which in this case was recorded between 1983 and 1999, or from the time just after "Thriller" to the time just before "Invincible." For the most part, the producers chose to work with a cappella vocals, in an effort not to be overly influenced by the original tracks. The result is an album that puts Jackson's vocal abilities — his smooth ecstasy and pained grit; his swoops, pops, shouts and grunts; those moments when he's overcome by emotion, or breaking free of all restraint and gravity — front and center.

It's the central reason why "Xscape" works as well it does, and to be sure, it works very well. Though these tracks build in complexity, they're never complicated. The focus throughout remains Jackson's voice, and there's none of the overworked and undercooked feeling that sank the previous posthumous Jackson album, 2010's "Michael." If "Xscape" sounds fresh, that's because it is. Once he was the world's biggest pop star, Jackson might spend years working on individual songs, cutting up to 50 tracks for a single album. But Timbaland completed his tracks for "Xscape" at pace of about one a day, once he got past the difficulty of listening to Jackson's vocals in the studio and not being able to talk back to him. Stargate took longer -- about a week -- for one of "Xscape's" standouts, "Place With No Name."

The songs on "Xscape" are split between joy and desperation. There are two pure love songs, two tracks about trying to find a world where the pain drops away ("A Place With No Name" and the title track), and four songs about being trapped (by bad relationships or sexual abuse). From almost the very start, when he was singing about burning the disco down on "Off The Wall," Jackson's music mixed celebration and terror, as if he was unable to find, or maintain, the division between the two. His music offered a place to both explore and escape those tensions. On this album, it does again.

Here is our track-by-track breakdown of the new Michael Jackson album, "Xscape":

1. "Love Never Felt So Good"

After a sweep of strings that invoke American pop classics — "Georgia on My Mind," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" — the drums kick in and the bass pops. This is disco throwback, a sound that Pharrell and Bruno Mars have taken to the top of the charts in the last year. Produced by John McClain (co-executor of the Jackson estate) from a 1983 demo recorded with Paul Anka, "Love Never Felt So Good" is the sort of Jackson song you thought you'd never hear again: soaring, simple and direct.

2. "Chicago"

Timbaland and J-Roc's first entry is a dark funk tale of an affair with a married woman, with trap snares and washes of keyboard drama. Out front, Jackson's tenor voice lays out the promise of a love ("This woman had to be an angel from heaven sent just for me"), while his backing vocal screams of the consequences ("She tried to lead a double life, loving me while she was still your wife"). At the 3:20 mark, the drums drop out, and the vocals and fingersnaps take over. Timbaland sometimes felt he was hearing Jackson's spirit speak to him in the studio. This is one of those moments.

3. "Loving You"

Another straightforward love song, led by piano and hard-hitting drums from Timbaland and J-Roc. Originally recorded during the "Bad" sessions, this was a throwback to simpler times even then.

4. "A Place With No Name"

The centerpiece of "Xscape" is a remake of America's "Horse With No Name," which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972, when Jackson was 14 and just releasing his first solo album for Motown. The America song is the best and worst the '70s had to offer, with an indelible melody and lyrics about a mystical desert journey so meaningless that Randy Newman once described it as "this song about a kid who thinks he taken acid." Reworking it during the "Invincible" sessions in 1998 with producer Dr. Freeze, Jackson completely changed the lyrics, and the new song tells a story about a guy whose Jeep blows a flat on the highway, where he meets a woman who takes him to a utopia where "no people have pain." But in classic Jackson fashion, there's still tension — the woman who takes him there offers sexual fulfillment ("She showed me places I've never seen and things I've never done"), but he ends the song by pulling out his wallet and looking at pictures of his family, who aren't with him. Stargate delivers a keyboard-first track with a sound that recalls Stevie Wonder and a melody that invokes "Remember the Time."

5. "Slave to the Rhythm"

The original was produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface in 1991, during the "Dangerous" sessions, and was revised for "Xscape" by Timbaland and J-Roc. They've toughened up the R&B soap opera about a woman who's trapped by the rhythms of her life — dancing as fast as she can for the men in her life, both at home and at work — adding a spider web of keyboards and drums that capture the maddening pace the lyrics describe.

6. "Do You Know Where Your Children Are"

First recorded during the sessions for "Bad," then revived for "Dangerous," this is one of the message songs that Jackson liked so much. It tells the story of girl running away from sexual abuse and landing on the streets of L.A., where she turns tricks. Jackson was a victim of abuse, and accused of it; few will listen to this song without remembering that, and for some, his troubling life will overtake this track completely. Almost as if in anticipation of that, Timbaland and J-Roc use their most hypnotic keyboard riff as the central motif here, and the climbing synths in the bridge will have the listener thinking of Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond."

7. "Blue Gangsta"

The vocal tracks "Xscape's" producers worked with were in a finished and sometimes perfected state — complete with backing vocals, fingersnaps, and handclaps. And on an album of great vocals, this is one of the standouts, moving from breathy restraint to screaming soul. Timbaland and J-Roc deploy a devilish synth-bass part and trap drums, but pull almost everything back to let a chorus of Jackson's backing vocals take over at the end.

8. "Xscape"

Rodney Jerkins produced both the original, during the "Invincible" sessions, and the remake of the title track. The deluxe edition of "Xscape" includes the original, and the side-by-side comparison shows how the aggressive, angular rhythms Jackson loved so much after "Thriller" have been softened on "Xscape." The aggression now comes principally from vocals. Jerkins goes for a deeper bottom, using 808 drums, while Jackson sings about wanting getting away from the system, from bad relationships, from everything that holds him back. And for four minutes here, he does.

 

[dmehta]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...kson-Xscape-review-Jackson-would-approve.html

Michael Jackson, Xscape, review: 'Jackson would approve'


This posthumous Michael Jackson album gives us a glimpse of what the King of Pop might actually sound like had he lived, says Neil McCormick

By Neil McCormick

6:24PM BST 13 May 2014

The voice is still a thing of startling, electroshock beauty: spookily fluid, percussively explosive, pitched with both masculine and feminine qualities in a way that is exquisitely, soulfully human. Here it is, once again, gushing, snapping, gliding and self-harmonising over punchy 21st-century digital beats, such a lively, wondrous thing that it casts a spell from beyond the grave – at least as long as you don’t think too hard about what you are listening to.

The second posthumous album from the fallen King of Pop is both an act of loving homage and shameless commercial exploitation. Death is clearly no hindrance to a career in the age of the digital remix, and though Jackson was effectively in the commercial doldrums when he passed away in 2009, his estate have succeeded in writing off vast debts to turn him, once again, into one of entertainments biggest earners with stage shows, Cirque Du Soleil arena tours, films, track placement and advertising tie-ins generating hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Indeed, Jackson seems busier and more visible dead than alive, perhaps reflecting the fact that he is no longer the final arbiter of what is released in his name.

Discounting early childhood releases, Jackson only released six albums in 30 years from his 1979 Off The Wall breakthrough. Yet it turns out he kept himself busy throughout, constantly creating and ultimately rejecting hundreds of tracks in a demanding, self-critical and perfectionist approach to his music. That these might be of historical and sentimental interest is self-evident, yet a hasty 2010 assemblage of out-takes concocted as his first posthumous album, Michael, did little to dispel the notion that Jackson had buried this material for good reasons. It was not a terrible collection by any means, full of striking vocal performances of songs taken by the artist himself to a reasonable degree of completion, yet it was held in low regard by many of his own fans and came nowhere near to matching the sales of his original canon. If that was the best of what was left, what dregs might be expected from that difficult second posthumous album?

Rather than take the more historically respectable archival route of anthologising and annotating his vast troves of unreleased material, Jackson’s estate have allowed such contemporary super-producers as Timbaland, Rodney Jerkins and Stargate to construct entirely new backing tracks around vocals from eight unreleased songs. It is Michael Jackson reimagined in a modern pop sound environment with original material never heard before and effectively presented as a single coherent piece of work by the artist himself.

It is hard to imagine this scenario unfolding in other fields of artistic endeavour: Picasso repainted! Even all those sequels to famous novels by dead authors can’t pretend to actually be anything more than homage, offering a form of literary impersonation. I suppose the closest we have seen to this is digitally altered footage of dead film stars like Steve McQueen and Audrey Hepburn promoting products they had never endorsed in their lifetimes, which is a particularly disturbing form of cultural necrophilia.

Yet music has a long history of creative remixing, and at this stage there is hardly a famous singer dead or alive whose voice hasn’t adorned tracks they had little or no hand in creating. In the final resort, whatever your feeling about its creative authenticity, the album has to be judged on its own merits. Jackson worked in a mass-mainstream field that depends on certain qualities of sonic pushiness, up to the moment styles interpreted with cutting edge studio techniques, to hold attention in the contemporary moment. Although rejected by the singer in his lifetime, this is pop, not high art, and it has been handled with considerable care, giving us a glimpse, however illusory, of what this extraordinary talent might actually sound like had he lived.

Originally recorded in 1983, opening track Love Never Felt So Good harks back to Jackson’s early days, Timbaland's sleek, dynamic push evoking the lush revivalist disco of Daft Punk. It’s a fantastic, uplifting opening and Timbaland keeps up the impressive standard on Chicago, criss-crossing a twin vocal attack of languid verse and edgy, hysterical chorus to evoke the kind of percussive paranoia of classic tracks like Billie Jean and Dirty Diana with a stuttering, deep bass and icy synth string hooks. L.A. Reid and Babyface do a superb job updating the percussive attack of Slave To The Rhythm into a digital machine groove, matching the jabbing double-time beats with Jacksons’s breathy vocals. That’s probably the best of the bunch.

Timbaland’s saccharine and reverential production of Loving You is less impressive but Jackson’s gushy sentimentality was always his weakest suit. Indeed, shakier tracks like Blue Gangsta and A Place With No Name have inherent problems in the source material, the latter in particular confounding production team Stargate. In an attempt to polish and enliven a sweet but convoluted acoustic riff on America’s Horse With No Name they make the mistake of trying to crowbar in the overfamiliar patent Jackson beat of 1987’s Leave Me Alone and end up with a lumbering Frankenstein’s monster of sonic collage, neither one thing nor another. Yet all the producers are essentially respectful to Jackson himself, making sure his extraordinary vocals are the most forward and focussed part of the experience, so that even where the results are less convincing they remain intriguing and exciting. Production team Darkside collide sub bass with strings on the title track to create something with a restless, confusing energy that is genuinely startling, although I have a suspicion Jackson would have wanted to re-record some of those uncharacteristically wobbly low vocal lines.

The Deluxe version of Xscape offers up an extra album’s worth of original Jackson demos and gives you a clear sense of the process involved. To be honest, there are those who will prefer these sonically thinner yet charming demos for their sense of genuine musical personality and process of living creation, rather than gimmicky recreation. Personally, I think Jackson deserves a properly annotated anthology but maybe that will come when he’s held at greater remove from the hysteria generated by his tragic end. But he won’t get modern pop hits that way, which is what Jackson lived and breathed by, and what his posthumous 250 million dollar deal with Sony is presumably expected to deliver. For all the doubts about its underlying ethos, Xscape offers a restless spirit escape from the grave into contemporary grooves. I have a suspicion he would approve.

 

[Bubs]

Is The 'Xscape' Deluxe Version Worth It? 3 Words: Michael Jackson Demos
by TOM MOON
May 13, 2014 3:07 PM ET

When he died in June 2009, Michael Jackson left behind a trove of unfinished recordings — some were released on the 2010 album Michael, while many more were left behind because they were in rough demo form. Jackson's label went through the material, then asked Timbaland and other top producers to finish the King of Pop's ideas with an album called Xscape.

When it comes to posthumous releases by major stars, the music business doesn't exactly have a stellar track record. Think about the contrived duets between Natalie Cole and her departed dad, Nat King Cole. So I approached this new collection of unreleased Michael Jackson material with caution.

There's still no mistaking that voice; that fervent intensity he brought to every line. Can't lie: It's nice to hear. Still, there's reason to wince about this project — it's devoted to material that Jackson worked on for various albums, but didn't finish or elected not to share. Making matters worse, these tracks don't represent Jackson's vision alone: Label president L.A. Reid commissioned producers to "contemporize" — his word — Jackson's demos to appeal to the current market.

But the deluxe version also includes the raw demos before they were "contemporized." Even in what sounds like a rehearsal situation, Jackson manages to convey the heart of a song. He nails all the twists of the melody. His passion sells it — you forget it's not a final take. At times, he sounds like he's thinking back to Motown days and recalling the influence of Stevie Wonder.

The set tells us something else about Michael Jackson: He struggled to escape the long shadow of Thriller. On his subsequent records, songs that sounded too similar to his hits didn't make the cut. Several of these appear on the new Xscape. These are not earth-shattering compositions, but they're solid and exhilarating in spots — certainly more than just vault scraps. You can hear Jackson really pouring energy into them, doing his best to lift them up. It's the performances that make this a worthwhile, valuable, fitting postscript to Jackson's legacy.

http://www.npr.org/2014/05/13/31215...on-worth-it-three-words-michael-jackson-demos

 

[Sunwalker7]

Xscape currently has a score of 72 on metacritic, based on 11 reviews.

http://www.metacritic.com/music/xscape/michael-jackson

 

[mkgenie]

Rolling Stone: 3 1/2 stars , even better than the score they gave to Invincible (RS 3 stars )

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/xscape-20140513

By Rob Tannenbaum
May 13, 2014

Michael Jackson has been more prolific in death than he usually was while alive. For his second posthumous studio LP, weighing in at an ungenerous eight songs, Timbaland and Jerome Harmon lead a team of producers who've added bulk and even dubstep eruptions to Jackson's unfinished tracks, originally laid down between 1983 and 2002.

"Loving You" (recorded during sessions for 1987's Bad) follows the wonderful, breezy legacy of "Rock With You" and "The Way You Make Me Feel." But it's an exception: Most of these songs rot and sway with fear. In "Chicago," Jackson rails at a harlot who seduced him, despite being married with kids. The Dangerous outtake "Slave to the Rhythm" details an ugly marriage, and the EDM surges of the astounding, audacious "Do You Know Where Your Children Are" chronicle the grim fate of a preteen girl who runs from an abusive stepdad. Even with such dark subject matter, though, it's a joy to hear the joy in Jackson's voice.

Female sexual predators and the abuse of children were frequent Jackson themes. So was his sense of martyrdom. In "Xscape," he uses his array of percussive gasps and clucks to describe how TV cameras (and, inevitably, a greedy woman) plague his life. In the second chorus, he slips in a chilling ad-lib that's easy to overlook: "I'm dying."

 

[Bubs]

Review: Michael Jackson's 'Xscape' Album Is Eternal Greatness
Luke Fox Posted May 15, 2014

With help from Timbaland and L.A. Reid, Michael Jackson moonwalks past the posthumous curse for a brilliant collection of revamped archival tracks with 'Xscape.'
If you’re more anxious than excited to tap play on a posthumous album—let alone a posthumous album from an icon, a childhood hero—your instincts are probably correct. Look no further than the fallen King of Pop’s first vault excavation, 2010’s Michael, for an exercise in “contemporizing” (barf) original demos, half-finished potential classics and outtakes that fall flat and are, at best, forgettable and, at worst, a slash at the shins of a great legacy.

But Michael Jackson fans (i.e., pretty much all of us, no?) should shed their apprehension and give Xscape—purposely given a one-word, risqué-lite title to align with his classic LPs—a spin. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Meticulously curated and polished under the guidance of by executive producer and dance-floor czar Timbaland, Xscape culls eight potential singles from 19 years of Jackson’s unreleased solo output. It’s remarkable that a cobbled collection of eight tunes from 1983 to 2002 can sound this cohesive and this good.

Xscape wins because Jackson’s quivering voice remains foremost in the mix, and the beats, for the most part, smack that sweet spot between what could jolt in the club today and what Jackson himself would green-light.

Of course, it helps that disco rhythms are weaseling their way back in vogue and that the mere sound of Jackson’s voice in its prime—the sure-thing lead-off “Love Never Felt So Good” was plucked from 1983(!) and written with Paul Anka, who’s now 72—warms us to the core. (A bonus version of the single features Timbo pal Justin Timberlake, who also co-directs the video, but otherwise the afterthought guest appearances are nonexistent, and will.i.am is nowhere to be found.) More compelling is “Place with No Name,” Jackson’s re-imagined version of America’s 1972 monster “Horse with No Name,” updated by StarGate.

Tracks left on the cutting-room floor from Bad and Dangerous also shine, the shivering “Blue Gangsta” acting as a rare low point in a collection of songs that almost all could have worked their way onto one of MJ’s diamond-certified albums.

A fame-chasing narrative, “Do You Know Where Your Children Are” (originally titled with the leaner “12 O’Clock” and absent of EDM adrenaline), was slated for Dangerous, and is smartly placed in the middle of the record. The Cory Rooney-penned “Chicago,” exposing a conniving woman, failed to qualify for Invincible, but it gets juiced up by Timbaland signatures here and sounds better than most of the tracks that made that 1999 record. Ditto Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins’ title track: “Xscape” is the only song of the eight that welcomes its original producer back to touch up the canvas, and it paints a happy disco sheen over the cage of fame Jackson unintentionally constructed around himself. Of course, MJ’s iconic high-pitched yelps and ad-libbed chirps dance throughout. Shamone!

And it’s around that point when you either forget that you're listening to what a cynic would deem an estate cash-grab of leftovers or you no longer care. You're just listening to one of the best songwriters to ever live do his thing. —Luke Fox

http://www.vibe.com/article/review-michael-jacksons-xscape-album-eternal-greatness

 

[SmoothMJ]

Another fantastic review.

I'm feeling the L.O.V.E.

 

[pollys2]

Michael Jackson, ‘Xscape’ Proves To Be A Much Better Than Expected Posthumous Album
http://www.starpulse.com/news/Brent_Faulkner/2014/05/15/review_michael_jackson_xscape

“Couldn’t have said it better myself!” – my thoughts on another new Michael Jackson album that is, as excerpted from a previous post: “Let’s not kid ourselves at all here – Michael Jackson’s most important/best work has come and gone. No questions or skepticisms whatsoever. The classic albums that the late pop/R&B star previously released are what cement his legendary status, not something like the highly anticipated, posthumously released Xscape.” Perhaps I was a bit harsh or the slightest bit too pre-judgmental, but truthfully, unless MJ had released another Thriller posthumously somehow, his new album wasn’t going to supersede his best work. That said Xscape is no slouch in the least. This skinny eight-track album (the nine tracks in the deluxe editions are different mixes) is a fine one that’s more than worthy of some spins. Think of Xscape as what MJ would’ve sounded in the 2010s – swag written all over it!

“Love Never Felt So Good” kicks off XScape, carrying classicism about it. The track doesn’t feel anachronistic, but does preserve a neo-disco sound that was incredibly popular in the 80s, of which this cut hails from. The production work is tasteful and lush, giving this unreleased track fresh life in the pop-soul vein. Sunny and optimistic, while “Love Never Felt So Good” may not reach the unreachable and untouchable status of Jackson’s universally acclaimed classics, it is a noteworthy addition, definitely stronger than “This Is It” was.

“Chicago” has a difficult act to follow, but the sound track from the Invincible sessions (late 90s and early 00s) holds its own. Perhaps even more than “Love Never Felt So Good”, the sound is more contemporary oriented, certainly more than it would’ve been had it made Invincible back in 2001. Still, the vintage appeal of Jackson and the tail end of the New Jack swing era is apparent. “Loving You” is an even older cut than “Chicago”, hailing from Jackson’s Bad era. Arguably, “Loving You” sounds more contemporary given the modern production tricks of Timbaland and co-producer Jerome “Jroc” Harmon. The balladry of the number does reminisce back to “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”, notably the harmonies, but still feels fresh in 2014. Maybe that freshness is most attributed to the timelessness of Jackson the artist. Regardless, the lushness of “Loving You” truly incites a romantic vibe.

“A Place With No Name” arrives from the Invincible sessions like “Chicago” did, but sounds older. According to the liner notes, “A Place With No Name” contains a portion of “A Horse With No Name” written by Dewey Bunnell, a 70s song, which would explain the ‘older sound’. Even so, “A Place With No Name” definitely has the script listeners have come to characterize Jackson with – busy percussive groove, minimalist rhythmic production cues in general, and MJ’s signature scoops and yelps (for lack of a better word). There is a sense of familiarity with “A Place With No Home” that naturally elevates this track up a peg or two on the listening hierarchy.

“Slave To The Rhythm” hails from the heart of New Jack Swing, Jackson’s Dangerous era. “Slave To The Rhythm” definitely has the elements that made a joint like “Jam” or “In The Closet” a success. Even with Timbaland’s updates, he doesn’t tread too far to strip the new-jack sound – he merely refines it for the times. Production details aside, the real draw of “Slave To The Rhythm” is that it possess the grittiness of some of Jackson’s best. “Do You Know Where Your Children Are” is definitely a Jackson record, with a pronounced socially conscious message front-and-center. “Do you know where your children are?” the pop star asks on the chorus, “…If they are somewhere out on the street / just imagine how scared they are.” David Williams’ electric guitar solo towards the end of the cut definitely signals that 90s sound that Jackson bought into on both Dangerous and the more underrated History. A highlight here is the gargantuan drums and the impact of the hits.

“What you gonna do / you ain’t no friend of mine / the blue gangsta”. No track my have more swagger than the slick “Blue Gangsta”, which opens incredibly mysteriously before settling into mean-sounding contemporary R&B. Timbaland delivers some of his most inspired production work, truly updating the original. The final funky brass hit is an incredibly thoughtful production choice. Besides a killer groove and superb palette of sounds, vocally Jackson sound impressive, particularly his biting, gritty upper register. The feistiness of the pop star truly shines through here; you could totally envision Jackson ‘eating up’ this cut when he originally recorded it.

Title track “Xscape” concludes the standard edition of the album. A cut about escapism (“Everywhere I turn, no matter where I look / the system’s in control, it’s all ran by the book…”), “Xscape” seems optimistic, but not without pain or disillusionment. Unsurprisingly, the production work continues to be impressive, this time at the hands of Rodney Jerkins, a seminal part of Invincible. “Xscape” only has one flaw of note, from the musical critic who is also a total music nerd – MJ’s lower vocals on the verse are coarse in sound as if he was rushed, playing less attention to accurate pitch. Once he gets into his upper register – where fans’ ears have become tuned the most to – “it’s all good”.

The deluxe edition of Xscape features the original versions of the standard tracks as well as the duet version of “Love Never Felt So Good” featuring Justin Timberlake. Additionally, the deluxe edition comes with a DVD, which features a documentary about the project. After listening to the original versions, it makes sense why producers opted to enhance the material with new mixes and more development. The originals are solid overall, but don’t necessarily have the pizzazz that the newer mixes do. Additionally, some of the originals sound ‘dated’ (contextually) compared to today’s music. Sure, they everything sounds very MJ like, but there is a draw to the slick production work courtesy of Timbaland, Jerome “Jroc” Harmon, Rodney Jerkins, and Stargate. Wouldn’t a truly contemporary Michael Jackson sound, well, modern? I think so.

Ultimately, Xscape proves to be a ‘much better than expected’ posthumous MJ album. It doesn’t fall into the same league as Jackson’s ‘Big 3’ albums (Off The Wall, Thriller or Bad), but it certainly is a welcome addition to the pop star’s discography. Each of the eight new songs is worthwhile – none of them misses the mark. Even being nitpicky, it’s hard to deny this is more of the MJ caliber album desired when Michael arrived in December 2010. Personally, this is how I would’ve envisioned Michael Jackson’s sound evolving past his prime, had he lived. Xscape receives my blessing.

Favorites:
“Love Never Felt So Good”; “A Place With No Name”; “Do You Know Where Your Children Are”; “Blue Gangsta”

Verdict: ★★★★

 

[jarza]

Michael Jackson - Xscape
(Epic/Sony)

By Julia LeConte

NOW RATING: NNNN (4 out of 5)


Michael Jackson’s second posthumous record is miles better than Michael, 2010’s embarrassing, cobbled-together insult to MJ’s legacy.

Overseen by Epic CEO L.A. Reid, the album has been whittled down from about two dozen nearly complete tunes to eight, and then recast for the contemporary ear by producers such as Timbaland and J-Roc.

The songs are all totally enjoyable, even the schmaltzier ones like Loving You, inspiring toe-tapping and appreciation for Jackson’s phenomenal vocals.

Blue Gangsta, meanwhile, is a badass cinematic thriller with Jackson’s angry voice (think Scream) and harmonizing backup vocals. Do You Know Where Your Children Are finds Jackson at his political best (think Black Or White or They Don’t Care About Us).

The updated versions succeed in maintaining Jackson’s spirit: A Place With No Name, for example, brings wobbly synths to a song that’s otherwise reminiscent of Bad’s The Way You Make Me Feel.

The deluxe edition of the disc comes with the originals as well, and although the songs span two decades, they all stand up today in their virgin form.

There’s a sad feeling listening to this record. Remember, these songs were left on the cutting-room floor.

God, he was good.

Top track: Do You Know Where Your Children Are

http://www.nowtoronto.com/music/story.cfm?content=197986

 

[Annita]

Michael Jackson’s High Musical Standards Still Resonate on [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon]

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/05/ghost_in_the_vault_michael_jackson_s_xscape.html

By: Mark Anthony Neal
Posted: May 20 2014 3:00 AM

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[lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon]

Sony Music

The ghost of Michael Jackson appeared during Sunday night’s broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards, but the holographic stunt pales in comparison to the actual ghost of Jackson that still haunts the vaults at Sony Music.

Or so Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley might say, expressing in the 20-minute making-of video that accompanies the digital release of [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon] (the second posthumous collection of unreleased Jackson tracks) that Jackson “communicated” with him throughout the production process.

The comment speaks profoundly to who Jackson was—an artist who achieved a level of musical success, both commercially and artistically, that is arguably unprecedented. [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon] stands not only as a testament to Jackson’s artistry but also as a model for which his contemporary peers should strive.


Jackson left behind one of the most lucrative musical catalogs, and Sony Music has banked on the value of what’s in his vault. It has offered his estate $250 million for the right to release music through 2017—even using one of his new songs, “Love Never Felt So Good,” in a series of ads for Jeep.

Most artists would be thrilled to have sold the 4 million units that Jackson’s first posthumous release, 2010’s Michael, did. But while longtime fans have the right to be cynical, considering how artistically underwhelming that album was, [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon] by contrast surprisingly channels a Michael Jackson who’s both recognizable and in peak form.

Jackson was known to be obsessive about his recording process and it was that obsession with perfection that Antonio “L.A.” Reid—who serves as the project’s curator and executive producer—utilized in picking tracks for the project. If Jackson had recorded multiple versions of a track, Reid speculated that it was a song that was important to Jackson. One such song was “Slave to the Rhythm,” which Reid initially worked on with then-producing partner Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds more than 20 years ago when Jackson was recording [lexicon]Dangerous[/lexicon].

Reid is neither saint nor sinner here—he is after all a record exec—but at least he had enough of a relationship with Jackson, and more importantly his music, to provide some semblance of care in representing Jackson’s art. And his sensibilities here can not be overstated; all too often, the archives of black music come under the control of folk who, for the most part, had little, if any, connection to the music as it functioned organically in black cultural spaces.

Listening to both the original versions of the songs and the contemporary remakes, which feature production from the Stargate collective, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins and Mosley, is illuminating. While it is understandable [lexicon]Why[/lexicon] some of the tracks in their original forms might not have fit conceptually on 1991’s [lexicon]Dangerous[/lexicon] or 2001’s [lexicon]Invincible[/lexicon] (both primarily featuring production from Jerkins and Teddy Riley), in their updated forms the songs are every bit the match of those aforementioned recordings. Jerkins had a particularly interesting role in [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon] in that the title track is the only track that was produced by the same producer.

Standouts also include “Loving You,” a track written by Jackson and given a surprisingly light touch by Mosley and co-producer Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, who contributed production on five of the lean eight tracks. “Loving You” is one of the few songs where the original stands on its own—though Mosley and Harmon transform the original mid-tempo ballad into a ready-made “stepper” classic.

Jackson’s interpolation of America’s 1972 soft-rock classic “Horse With No Name”—now “A Place With No Name”—is an example of one of the original tracks that is far better than the brand-new. Though Stargate does justice to the spirit of Jackson’s version of the song, Jackson’s vocals are clearly front and center in the original. Indeed, Jackson’s unadorned vocals, with that percussive element contained in the best of his performances as a mature artist, are the true stars of [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon]. It sounds, indeed, as if he is still moonwalking the earth.


In many ways, Jackson was a prisoner to his own success; he could never really match the accomplishment of his Quincy Jones-produced trilogy of [lexicon]Off the Wall[/lexicon] (1979), [lexicon]Thriller[/lexicon] (1982) and Bad (1987). [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon] won’t make anyone forget those recordings; nor should it. [lexicon]Xscape[/lexicon] might not be the best of Michael, but it’s a reminder that he set standards so high for himself, he remains peerless even as the ghost in the vault.


Mark Anthony Neal is a professor of African and African-American studies at Duke University and a fellow at the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He is the author of several books, including Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities. Follow him on Twitter.

Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

 

[Bubs]

"In many ways, Jackson was a prisoner to his own success; he could never really match the accomplishment of his Quincy Jones-produced trilogy of Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982) and Bad (1987). Xscape won’t make anyone forget those recordings; nor should it. Xscape might not be the best of Michael, but it’s a reminder that he set standards so high for himself, he remains peerless even as the ghost in the vault."

So true.

 

[HIStory]

"In many ways, Jackson was a prisoner to his own success; he could never really match the accomplishment of his Quincy Jones-produced trilogy of Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982) and Bad (1987). Xscape won’t make anyone forget those recordings; nor should it. Xscape might not be the best of Michael, but it’s a reminder that he set standards so high for himself, he remains peerless even as the ghost in the vault."

So true.

I wish though that Americans would sometimes look past Bad...

 

[athina_livadi]

Bullsh@t review!

 

[magiktori]

http://music.thetalkhouse.com/talks/meshell-ndegeocello-talks-michael-jacksons-xscape/
A long time ago, I had the chance to work in a studio where Michael Jackson had recently recorded. The engineers there told me that Michael...

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A long time ago, I had the chance to work in a studio where Michael Jackson had recently recorded. The engineers there told me that Michael required enough room in the booth to dance while he tracked his vocals. He had to be able to dance while he sang; the movements were part of the way the lyrics fit the song, the voice and the movement all worked together to make it authentic.
I loved listening to his music after that, knowing the music enhanced the motion, which in turn enhanced the vocals. What strikes me most about Xscape, his second posthumous collection of previously unreleased work, is the lack of body, the detachment, the giant distance between the music and the man singing the song.
Xscape is material, some of it dating all the way to 1983, that Michael recorded for various albums, but then decided not to release. L.A. Reid, the head of Epic Records, recruited contemporary producers such as Timbaland, StarGate and Rodney Jerkins to rework these original tracks with modern, radio-friendly production.
First, I listened to the original versions of these songs, which are available on the deluxe edition of Xscape, and then read the history of each track. No doubt, the production from these top-seeded production giants is great, but if you are a Michael Jackson fan, you have to wonder if these songs didn’t make the cut then because he was not satisfied with them. I tried not to listen with that in mind, but in the end, no matter how much I miss Michael, I can’t say I feel these tracks deserve to make the cut now. If he left them out because they weren’t up to snuff, he was right to do it.
“Slave to the Rhythm,” reworked by Timbaland, feels like a construction site of layers on top of parts on top of more parts that pulsate and flicker, hoping to emulate the musicality Michael was known for. Honestly, I could only get through the track if I were exercising. I preferred the older version of “Blue Gangsta,” which was an outtake from 2001′s Invincible, the last album of original material Michael released while he was alive. I found the original version more interesting — with its accordion and references to Mafia movie soundtracks, it grooves in a way that feels a bit more natural but, by the end, the horns feel over the top and conspicuous, making me miss the expertise and craft of the arrangements on previous albums, care of Quincy Jones and the Seawind horn section. “Chicago” also failed to make Invincible. Maybe it was worth exploring, but it still belongs on the editing room floor. “Loving You,” recorded in 1987 during the making of Bad, does have a joyful feeling so signature of Michael, but it sounds dated. The disco feel of first single “Love Never Felt So Good” (produced by John McClain, the executor of Michael’s estate) is just (and I hate to say this) sad in that it struggles to make you feel good, even as it relies on tried-and-true clichés. Also, I swear the clap track is out of sync between 1:53 and 2:06.
“A Place with No Name” is the song I am most drawn to because producer Stargate actually fulfilled the hope that the song longs for. It has a cycling bass line that locks you in, and we hear Michael sing a familiar melody, based on America’s “A Horse with No Name.” I found the title haunting, given how Michael was caught between real life and fantasy — his own, maybe, and ours, certainly. Michael Jackson is here and gone, somewhere and nowhere, probably forever.
Overall, this album is an exercise in remixing, and there is some impressive production. But the vocals feel old, outdated and seemingly left unaddressed, as if too sacred to touch, but also too stale to work with, with samples of classic ad-libs and chirps added in only to reinforce the “Michael Jackson-ness” of it all. I wanted to root for it, to feel like I used to when I heard a new Michael Jackson song, but he’s a long, long way from here. There’s nothing about Xscape that adds to Michael’s legacy.
The original version of “Love Never Felt So Good,” co-written with Paul Anka, leads me to fantasize what Michael Jackson might have discovered by continuing to simplify and just write with piano, if he had been allowed just to be the musical genius rather than the pop spectacle. There is a true grace in that track — it’s buried deep, but it’s there — and it made me long for his unique talent, his ear, his singular musical heart. At the same time, I wonder if Michael could ever have aged gracefully, musically or otherwise, and if his songs would ever have been allowed to be vulnerable, simpler, there for the craft of songwriting alone. For better or for worse, we will never know.

 

[HIStory]

^

No doubt, the production from these top-seeded production giants is great, but if you are a Michael Jackson fan, you have to wonder if these songs didn’t make the cut then because he was not satisfied with them.

People should retire that old cliché argument already because it's just not true about all songs. Anyone who knows how Michael worked knows that Michael didn't always shelf a song because he was not satisfied with it.

Overall, this album is an exercise in remixing, and there is some impressive production. But the vocals feel old, outdated and seemingly left unaddressed, as if too sacred to touch, but also too stale to work with, with samples of classic ad-libs and chirps added in only to reinforce the “Michael Jackson-ness” of it all.

What does the "vocals are outdated" mean? That Michael is from a generation of singers who actually could sing without autotune? I'm glad they were "too sacred to touch". I can see how a production or song structure can be "outdated" (though I disagree with the notion that just because something sounds modern it is automatically superior and just because something sounds old it's automatically inferior). But "outdated vocals"? To me that makes no sense. You either can sing or you cannot. That's what vocals should be about - whether it's an old or a new song.

So far even those who were critical of the album praised at least the vocals and now this person finds a way to criticize exactly the strongest point of the album: the vocals? SMH.

 

[magiktori]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5exzPfPLtk just so you know this person is

 

[HIStory]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5exzPfPLtk just so you know this person is

Yes, I looked her up. Her music is not bad, but I still don't understand what "outdated vocals" mean. I mean, I'd understand if she said "outdated production" or "outdated song structures", but "outdated vocals" - that term doesn't make any sense to me.That's my main problem with her review.

 

[analogue]

Michael was always in a lose lose situation because if he was to make an album that sounded like Off The Wall or Thriller the media would be saying that he's a one trick pony, and that his album is ''dated''. But if he made an album that was completely new and fresh the media would be complaining that the music doesn't sound like it did on Off The Wall and Thriller.

 

[Bubs]

Michael was always in a lose lose situation because if he was to make an album that sounded like Off The Wall or Thriller the media would be saying that he's a one trick pony, and that his album is ''dated''. But if he made an album that was completely new and fresh the media would be complaining that the music doesn't sound like it did on Off The Wall and Thriller.

In UK some critics call David Bowie and Rod Stewart sell-out because their music changed during the years:scratch:
I suppose they could call MJ sell-out too because he refused to do same music all over again.

 

[analogue]

Perfect example of this is HIStory. The media bashed that album because it didn't have the fun, disco sound that Off The Wall had, but after what Michael went through in 1993 what did they expect? For him to sing harmless catchy songs like Rock With You as if nothing ever happened?

 

[ASIS]

Perfect example of this is HIStory. The media bashed that album because it didn't have the fun, disco sound that Off The Wall had, but after what Michael went through in 1993 what did they expect? For him to sing harmless catchy songs like Rock With You as if nothing ever happened?

Yes. Because to a lot of people, MJ was nothing but a puppet, a front. With the real creative geniuses behind the scenes doing the real magic. So whatever was going on in his real life shouldn't impact his artistry, and if it did then it's bad because MJ was not an artist, but again, a puppet.

I firmly believe that's why HIStory was ill received, because there's no way to deny that album was all MJ. What's even more interesting is that the media championed "You Are Not Alone" back when the album released BECAUSE it was just harmless fun, it's the Michael they knew and "loved". Fast forward 19 years (19 YEARS!) and it's evident that songs such as TDCAU, ES, and SIM are holding a much better ground than YANA.

 

[HIStory]

Yes. Because to a lot of people, MJ was nothing but a puppet, a front. With the real creative geniuses behind the scenes doing the real magic. So whatever was going on in his real life shouldn't impact his artistry, and if it did then it's bad because MJ was not an artist, but again, a puppet.

I firmly believe that's why HIStory was ill received, because there's no way to deny that album was all MJ. What's even more interesting is that the media championed "You Are Not Alone" back when the album released BECAUSE it was just harmless fun, it's the Michael they knew and "loved". Fast forward 19 years (19 YEARS!) and it's evident that songs such as TDCAU, ES, and SIM are holding a much better ground than YANA.

TDCAU is actually his most viewed video on YT after Thriller. It stood the test of time, even if at the time the US media did everything in their power to bury it.

 

[bluesky]

MUSIC | REVIEWS
[h=1]Michael Jackson: Xscape Review[/h]By Eric Luecking
June 3, 2014 | 4:34pm


For all the snafus that marred the posthumous Michael release, the general buzz about the next one in line wasn’t dampened. Of course it helps when an artist is one of the most revered in music history to get the benefit of the doubt, but hardcore fans still haven’t been consistently keen on the way with which those in charge of MJ’s estate have gone about his vault material. For every bump in the road (The Remix Suite comes to mind), a number of his post-death collections and retrospectives have been very well done including the beautifully-packaged and compiled Hello Word: The Motown Solo Collection, the Bad 25 box set, the megamix extravaganza Immortal and the criminally underrated The Stripped Mixes.
Format notwithstanding, Xscape comes in two main flavors: a 30+ minute, eight-track disc containing reworked versions of vault material and a 17-track deluxe edition including all eight tracks in their original form plus a duet with Justin Timberlake on “Love Never Felt So Good.” For a few extra dollars, the deluxe version is by far the best value, offering the listener to hear a work-in-progress compared to a completed track as well as a DVD documentary on the project itself.
It’s difficult to call a project like Xscape an official album given that it didn’t have the artist’s full blessing, but those arguments are more barroom banter than anything. What really matters is: is the music any good? Well, it can depend upon your vantage point. Purists will claim that it’s criminal to let a modern producer touch the material, but oftentimes said purists are also, shall we say, removed from the current musical landscape. Casual listeners may be just as inclined to prefer more modern productions compared to sometimes dated techniques or sounds. Cliques aside, the material itself derives from across nearly 20 years, giving it a less than cohesive feel from an album standpoint. Jackson’s vocals sound quite different from the likes of “Love Never Felt So Good” to “Blue Gangsta,” even without the backing track clouding your judgment. Where the compilers of this project made a smart decision was to offer both versions. Everyone wins.
Remember that MJ himself was a bridge between the two worlds. Given how he literally grew up in an environment with some of the best writers and producers in the classic music era, he also was inclined to push forward his sound, bringing along the rest of music with him, challenging both the listener and those around him to embrace the future as he got older.
If the Thriller era is your preference, you’ll be elated with the results of “Love Never Felt So Good.” A modern version so good that it would be right at home on a period 45, producers John McClain, Giorgio Tuinfort and Paul Anka absolutely nailed the disco soul sound that Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton so frequently cooked up with Michael. The string arrangement is magical. The original version presented on the latter half of the disc is mostly stripped with snaps and handclaps layered with multitracked vocals and a solo piano played by Anka. The duet version with Justin Timberlake sounds forced, striking given that Timberlake typically sounds natural in a feel-good dance pop track. Perhaps it suffers from overproduction with added percussion and vocal beatboxing on top of everything else.
The brooding “Slave To The Rhythm” featuring production by Timbaland is the cream of the ‘90s tracks presented. It’s unfortunate that the pair didn’t get to work together live in studio. Timbaland proves here that a massive hit-in-the-making could be culled between them. With a bumped-up BPM pushing the threshold, it’s exactly the kind of track that would have had Jackson’s creative juices flowing with its spacey effects and Strafe-like 808s.Time didn’t permit such a pairing, though. Even with both producing music in the late ‘90s, Timbaland’s sound was geared more towards syncopation and Dirty South beats at the time. Over the past decade or so, he’s enhanced his sound considerably, expanding into more full production beyond the urban realm and successfully crossing over to mainstream radio all while still injecting idiosyncrasies and oddities to head-turning results. It would have been exciting to see Jackson perform dance moves in a primetime music video getting special promotion, but alas we’ll just have to dream.
Lyrically, Jackson covers everything from love to more serious topics like enslavement and broken families on the songs presented. As his career grew, he took more risks in what he released as singles, moving from surefire radio staples like “P.Y.T.” and “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” to more socially-conscious material like “Earth Song” or the controversial “They Don’t Care About Us.” For the most part, Xscape honors that legacy and should help to relieve some of the mistrust that some may have with those in charge of the icon’s estate. We should be so lucky to have L.A. Reid in charge of the next vault project if these are the kind of results he’s going to deliver.



http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/06/michael-jackson-xscape-review.html

 

[KOPV]

Yes, I looked her up. Her music is not bad, but I still don't understand what "outdated vocals" mean. I mean, I'd understand if she said "outdated production" or "outdated song structures", but "outdated vocals" - that term doesn't make any sense to me.That's my main problem with her review.

thats just her way of sounding smart without saying anything smart.. You can stylize a voice to sound like specific decades etc. but Michael's voice is timeless, that's why he was MICHAEL JACKSON.. I'm not just saying that as a fan, any true vocalist would agree.. The only "dated" sons to his voice is it was authentic an good.. Today singers are far between and the people we here on the radio are just the vessels that portray musicians to promote this "fast food" music...

Not it all but most.. His voice is "dated" because he doesn't need a computer to create it

 

[Annita]

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/06/what-michael-jackson-would-have-felt-about-xscape.html

What Michael Jackson Would Have Felt About Xscape

By Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard
June 13, 2014 | 4:06pm
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What Michael Jackson Would Have Felt About Xscape
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Michael Jackson’s bodyguards Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard imagine how the King of Pop would have reacted to a remixed album of unreleased tracks.

Ever since Michael Jackson died, there have been many arguments over how his estate has handled his musical legacy. The latest one erupted last month with the release of Xscape, the album of Michael Jackson’s unfinished demos, updated and polished by LA Reid, Timbaland, Rodney Jerkins and others. Last week, we even got a hologram of Mr. Jackson, singing and dancing from beyond the grave. Some fans are overjoyed just to have his music back in the spotlight. Others are calling it a terrible violation of what Jackson would have wanted if he were alive.

In the studio, Jackson was a perfectionist, carefully obsessing over every detail of his songs before releasing them to the public, and it was well-established in his lifetime that he didn’t like his record label remixing and changing his music. But whenever you’re dealing with the legacy of a great artist, things are going to get complicated. Having worked as Mr. Jackson’s personal security team for two-and-a-half years, spending days and weeks at his side, going to and from the recording studio and listening to him work at home, we feel we can offer some unique insight on how he might feel about this album and the controversy it’s created.

We were with Mr. Jackson during the time he was working on the remixes for the 25th anniversary release of Thriller. Those remixes were Sony’s idea, not his. We’d hear him on the phone all the time, arguing with his manager about not wanting to do them. Whenever the subject of the remixes came up, he’d say, “There are some things you should never touch.” We must have heard him say it a dozen times. As far as he was concerned, that album was perfect. You don’t go back and add hip-hop beats to Thriller. It’s a classic, and you don’t touch it. But Sony told him he had to. They told him he had to get in the studio and do these remixes to make himself new and hip again.

We first started taking him to the studio to do work on the tracks around February of 2007, and from there the process just dragged on forever. At that point, the anniversary of the release date was ten months off, in November. That came and went, and the album still wasn’t done. He kept putting it off and putting it off and the remixes kept taking longer and longer to finish. All sorts of stuff had been planned, TV specials, appearances—none of it happened. He wasn’t cool with it. By January of 2008, Jackson was living at the Palms resort in Las Vegas, using the recording studio there. One of us was with him in the studio nearly 24/7 while he worked, trying to catch up and finish these songs he was contractually obligated to do, but that he didn’t want to do. He wasn’t going in there with enthusiasm. You could tell that. Once the album came out there was all this hype in the media, but inside his camp it barely registered. He never talked about it like it was a big deal. We heard more excitement in his voice talking about going to the movies than we ever heard when he was talking about Thriller 25.

So, yes, he hated remixes. But we saw another side of Jackson, too. There was one night when we were staying at the Palms, at the same time he was working on these remixes for Thriller 25. He told us he wanted to go to the club downstairs. He didn’t want to make an appearance; he just wanted to hang out and do some people watching. This club had a VIP balcony that overlooked the crowd, so we set it up for him to go down there. We were in the club for maybe two to three minutes when all of sudden the deejay started playing one of his songs; they were mixing it, cutting it together with a bunch of other tunes. Mr. Jackson was bopping his head along to it, and he said, “Wow, I didn’t know that they still played my music.”

We were like, “What?!” We told him, “Sir, they still play your music all the time. In bars, clubs, everywhere.”

He said, “Really?”

He seemed surprised. He’d been out of the spotlight and beaten up by the tabloids for so long at that point that he really felt like maybe the world had moved on, that he wasn’t as popular anymore. It really made him happy to hear his songs in the club like that. He wanted his music to be remembered. Other artists often reached out for permission to sample his songs. Jackson’s attorney would call and say, “Tell Michael that Kanye West wants to sample such-and-such. What does he want to charge?”

We’d relay the message to Jackson, and he’d say, “Nothing. Tell them it’s fine if they just use it. The more they use my music, that means my music stays alive.” He could have charged a fortune, but he didn’t. He just wanted his music to be out there in the world. He wanted to be an inspiration, to be connected to this younger generation of artists and
producers
who were following in his footsteps. He wanted them to build on his legacy.

Jackson believed there are some things you should never touch, but he also wanted his music to be used and kept alive. So what would he have thought of Xscape? Honestly, he probably would enjoyed some aspects of it, and other aspects not so much. If he were here and he listened to the album and he heard even one wrong note, he’d be furious. He’d obsess over it for days, not stopping until he found a way to make it right. But if he saw young people in the club, dancing to this new single “Love Never Felt So Good”? That would have filled his heart with joy like you couldn’t imagine. To hear all these young producers talking about his genius in the studio? To have the #1 album in over 50 different countries? To know that he was still the King of Pop? That was important to him, too.

Michael Jackson’s final years took a heavy toll on him. He was hunted by the paparazzi, run down by the tabloids, beset by legal and financial problems. That we witnessed, only two things brought him real happiness during that difficult time: the love of his three children and the dedication of his fans, the people who never forgot about the music while the media was only obsessed with scandals and rumors. Those fans may never agree on whether the Jackson estate is doing the right thing or the wrong thing. We may never agree about the best way to honor his legacy, and we will all make our own choices about what albums to buy and what projects to support. But we can all agree on one thing Michael Jackson would have wanted: he’d want us to keep the music alive—in the club, on the dance floor, and in our hearts.

© 2014 Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard, authors of Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in his Final Days

Experts in the field of private protection, Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard served for two and a half years as the personal security team for Michael Jackson and have worked with numerous other high-profile clients, including Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Alicia Keys, and Shaquille O’Neal. For more information please visit rememberthetime-book.com, and follow the authors on Twitter